OTTAWA 01 - Liberal MP Irwin Cotler spoke to members of the media at a press conference on Parliament Hill, about three proposed initiatives that he has formed for universal human rights , September 27, 2011. Chris Roussakis/QMI Agency

OTTAWA — Former Liberal prime minister Paul Martin is nominating Irwin Cotler, who served as his attorney general during their two years in government, for the Nobel Peace Prize.

A human rights lawyer, the former MP is a longtime champion for political prisoners — including, at the time, South Africa’s Nelson Mandela — and devoted himself to that work after leaving a 16-year parliamentary career in 2015. He regularly convenes an all-party group of parliamentarians that urges the Canadian government to push rights-abusing regimes for amnesty, recently taking up the cause for jailed Saudi blogger Raif Badawi.

Cotler also recently sat on an independent Organization of American States panel that recommended Venezuelan officials be referred to the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, which Canada has formally endorsed. He was the country’s loudest advocate for the Magnitsky law that Canada adopted in late 2017, named after a Russian corruption lawyer who died suspiciously in prison. It allows the Canadian government to impose sanctions on individual foreigners accused of human rights abuses.

“Professor Cotler’s work in the name of civil rights defenders has no borders, and his impact is felt throughout Canada and around the world,” Martin wrote in a letter to the Nobel Institute dated September, provided by the organization Cotler founded, the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights.

Two political prisoners Cotler helped to release are supporting the nomination — Natan Sharansky, who was a political prisoner in the former Soviet Union, and Saad Eddin Ibrahim, a Cairo professor jailed under Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak’s regime.

“His efforts deserve to be held up as an example for others who will come after him,” Ibrahim told the Nobel committee. “I remain deeply grateful to have had someone of the stature of Irwin Cotler intercede on my behalf. I can think of no greater ‘quiet hero’ to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.”

Cotler was previously nominated for the honour in 2008. The Nobel Peace Prize typically receives several hundred nominations a year from current and former elected officials, university professors and others who are eligible to submit names for the prize committee’s consideration. Laureates are announced in October.